Melissa D. Hartley

Many colleges and universities rely upon online programs to support distance delivery of personnel preparation programs in special education and related services. These distance education programs enable individuals who live or work in rural communities to access training programs to earn teaching certification and assist rural schools in providing much-needed professional development opportunities for preservice and inservice personnel. Instructors have begun to use real-time online formats, such as voice chat, teleconferencing, and virtual reality applications, to increase learner participation in online courses and promote a sense of community across individuals at multiple sites. This article describes promising practices for creating and implementing learning activities in Second Life®, a virtual world, in a teacher education program that serves prospective and practicing teachers in many rural communities. The authors present a rationale for using this virtual reality application, explain how it has been implemented in a distance education program, and outline future directions for using it with other emerging technologies.

PURPOSE: Pegloticase-associated adverse events reported to the Food and Drug Administration Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) database in the United States were evaluated. METHODS: Retrospective data-mining analysis of FAERS case reports listing Krystexxa or pegloticase as the suspect drug and specific adverse events (cardiovascular events, infusion-related reactions, gout flares, and anaphylaxis) was conducted from the drug's approval date (September 14, 2010) through August 27, 2012. Initial and follow-up reports with the same primary linked identification number were identified as unique to each patient case. When multiple reports for the same patient were identified with a common case number, the report with the most recent date was used to eliminate duplicate reports. Bayesian confidence propagation neural network methodology was used to identify signals of drug-associated adverse events. A potential signal for drug-adverse event reports is generated when the lower limit of the 95% two-sided confidence interval of the information component is greater than 0. RESULTS: A total of 118 unique cases of adverse events involving pegloticase in the United States were identified during the study period. Fourteen reports were related to pegloticase-associated cardiovascular events, and 35 were related to pegloticase-associated infusion-related reactions. Twenty-six reports were related to pegloticase-associated gout, and 11 were reports of pegloticase-associated anaphylaxis. Bayesian statistics identified potential signals for all pegloticase-associated adverse events (cardiovascular events, infusion reactions, gout flares, and anaphylaxis). CONCLUSION: Analysis of pegloticase-associated adverse events submitted to the FAERS database found that cardiovascular events, infusion-related reactions, gout flares, and anaphylaxis occurred more frequently than was statistically expected.

Teaching in Second Life (SL) is much like teaching in K-12 schools in that the teacher has to plan in a similar fashion. However, when teaching in SL most students have never used this technology, therefore, the teacher must create the learning environment much like a designer creates an artifact, through planning, execution, and evaluation. Based on a literature survey and data collected from a teacher preparation distance education course taught entirely in Second Life, we identified the following steps of a design process: allow for social interaction, scaffold the students' learning of the new technology, plan for the structure of the course, the procedures in the classroom, and the transitions. We support our findings with empirical examples, and compare our findings with related work, focusing on social presence in 3D virtual learning environments.

Participants included graduate students in a teacher preparation program using Second Life (SL) as the educational platform for distance education courses. The students created and participated in role-playing scenarios for practicing specific skills, such as persuasion and conflict resolution. Data was analyzed qualitatively using both a case study and virtual ethnography methods. Dialogue in SL was analyzed using aspects of interaction analysis. We found that role-playings works well for teaching interpersonal problem solving skills in SL. This was the result of careful planning, combining abstract and concrete learning activities in multiple rounds, and debriefing sessions.